So, how difficult is it to own a gun in Japan?

Applicants first must go to their local police station and declare their intent. After a lecture and a written test comes range training, then a background check. Police likely will even talk to the applicant’s neighbors to see if he or she is known to have a temper, financial troubles or an unstable household. A doctor must sign a form saying the applicant has not been institutionalized and is not epileptic, depressed, schizophrenic, alcoholic or addicted to drugs.

Gun owners must tell the police where in the home the gun will be stored. It must be kept under lock and key, must be kept separate from ammunition, and preferably chained down. It’s legal to transport a gun in the trunk of a car to get to one of the country’s few shooting ranges, but if the driver steps away from the vehicle and gets caught, that’s a violation.

There are 120,000 registered gun owners and more than 400,000 registered weapons, yet the most current official statistics from 2011 show that 7 people were killed by guns while 9 were killed by scissors. Obviously Japan needs to enact a Constitutional Amendment outlawing the sale of scissors.

First, anyone who wants to get a gun must demonstrate a valid reason why they should be allowed to do so. Under longstanding Japanese policy, there is no good reason why any civilian should have a handgun, so – aside from a few dozen accomplished competitive shooters – they are completely banned.

Virtually all handgun-related crime is attributable to gangsters, who obtain them on the black market. But such crime is extremely rare and when it does occur, police crack down hard on whatever gang is involved, so even gangsters see it as a last-ditch option.

2 comments

I mean the Japanese culture is far more into manners, normal human behavior. Their governmental timeline was also interrupted by WWII so perhaps their government is far less fucked up and tyrannical than ours is now.

I mean our government killed Martin, two, no three Kennedys, flattened three WTC buildings, expanded the war of error from the middle-east into northern Africa. With government like this I can’t afford a gun.

Parts of Arizona are controlled by Mexican drug cartels. Yeah, Obama sold em the guns according to “right wing” leaning websites WE have to discount. That being said my farrier served in Iraq. He was wondering about Federally confiscated guns showing up halfway around the world. He could not take home a gun but the guys in “intel services”, different story. He was only a seargent. I fully believe him, he is a stand up guy.

We used to occasionally see a team of Hassidic Jew diamond merchants working antique shows as buyers.

Headline stories at the time of buyers who always dealt in cash and often carried more than a million dollars were common. I don’t know what happened but the stories have gone away and the diamond market has probably been greatly curtailed.

We didn’t carry around remotely that kind of cash but we did do shows and were easy marks for those interested as were thousands of others.

I had to consider whether it was worth keeping a loaded handgun in the car, especially for my wife and minor son who did most of the shows, as many other dealers did despite the risk. Massachusetts had a no excuse 1 year prison sentence for anyone caught doing so without a concealed weapon permit that was available only to residents. In New York City it was said only members of the mob got permits and notables had to hire mobsters for protection.

My college roommate kept a loaded pistol on his nightstand in our $20/month penthouse apartment. [The $20 was my share of rent for rooms in a crumbling building in a bad neighborhood.] I made derogatory comments about the gun and I thought my roommate’s girlfriend would scratch my eyes out. Later after I was gone, a deranged, drunken sailor broke the door down one night and my former roommate marched the sailor to a pay telephone on the corner with a gun in his ear to call the cops. There was no telephone in the building.

I sympathize with your thoughts, Mishima, and would love to see handguns outlawed but it is not black and white.

I chose not to have a loaded handgun in the car simply because most never get to the gun in emergencies. We had many colleagues murdered. One was a coin and gun dealer nearby who was murdered along with his wife and mother-in-law. His wife’s body showed evidence of torture apparently to get a safe combination from the dealer.

The dealer used to brag to any who would listen that nobody would rob his shop with all the high-tech security precautions he had taken. The murderers were “friends” he palled around with in Florida.